Books

London: Leonard Smithers, 1899. First Edition. Very Good. First Edition, first printing. One of 800 copies originally printed, which sold out immediately. Very Good. Covers soiled, corners and spine ends softened. Endsheets offset from binder's glue. Previous owner name partially effaced from front paste down. Slight odor to pages. Clipping with apparently forged signature of Oscar Wilde tipped in on recto of final blank sheet, by no means assumed to be authentic.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol (/rɛdɪŋ dʒeɪl/) on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison. During his imprisonment, he witnessed the events leading up to the hanging of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, for the murder of his wife; these events inspired the poem.

Look for the publisher Leonard Smithers, the year 1898.